How Iranian resistance groups are risking their lives to prevent nuclear war

Earlier this month, Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Authority’s director-general, told a meeting in Vienna that its inspectors had been denied access to Iran for over three years. He expressed grave fears about the regime’s violation of its commitments to the IAEA in international treaties. He warned that the mullahs had continued to increase their stockpile of enriched uranium, much of which is now at 60 per cent purity, a hair’s breadth away from weapons grade.

“There has been no progress in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues,” Grossi revealed. “Iran has not provided the agency with technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at Varamin and Turquzabad or informed the agency of the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment.”

Based on his evidence, France, the UK and Germany, as original signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, prepared a draft resolution demanding immediate action from the Iranian regime to restore access for the IAEA’s inspectors. The resolution was passed with 20 countries voting in favour, two against, and 12 abstentions.

Claims by the Iranian regime that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes are not credible (Picture: IIPA via Getty Images)

The JCPOA was a defective brainchild of the Obama administration. It was signed in 2015 by China, Russia, France, the UK and US, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America in 2018, describing the SCPOA as “the worst deal ever”, following revelations that the mullahs had clandestinely accelerated their efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. President Biden’s repeated attempts to renew the nuclear agreement foundered after widespread condemnation of his appeasement policy towards the repressive regime and clear evidence that they were trying to make a nuclear weapon.

Terrorist regime

The IAEA resolution was, in the words of Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the main democratic opposition movement, “inevitable and necessary but wholly inadequate”. Mrs Rajavi urged the nuclear file on Iran to be referred to the Security Council, saying the UN had the opportunity to place the regime under chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military and non-military action to “restore international peace and security”.

Mrs Rajavi also urged the Security Council to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s Gestapo, as a terrorist organisation and recognize the right of the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs’ tyrannical government. The IRGC is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US and Canada recently followed suit. It is time for the EU and UK to do likewise. Mrs Rajavi concluded: “The policy of appeasement, endless negotiations, and undue concessions have allowed the regime to advance its nuclear ambitions without significant repercussions, providing it with ample opportunity.”

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In 1991, the Iranian resistance stunned Western intelligence agencies by revealing the presence of a secret nuclear project in Iran. Resistance units inside the regime and their supporters have risked their lives to provide constant updates on the mullahs’ belligerent nuclear activities. The Iranian resistance has revealed details of the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons programme in more than 100 news conferences since 1991, including exposing crucial, secretive sites like Natanz and Arak in 2002.

Rise to Overthrow

And now these courageous people have revealed how the mullahs’ regime is planning to acquire more land in Qom, 75 miles south of Tehran, to secretly expand one of its nuclear facilities. According to a document published by GhyamSarnegouni, a nom de guerre meaning “Rise to Overthrow” in Farsi, a group of Iranian dissidents working with the resistance units managed to breach the servers of the regime’s presidency in May and gain access to a trove of classified documents and internal messages.

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These “top secret” documents confirm that, despite Tehran’s repeated denials that it is expanding its nuclear weapons programme, the regime continues to allocate resources to this effort. One letter calls on the governor of Qom to hand over land “for the development of Martyr Alimohammadi Enrichment Complex”. This is the infamous “Fordow” uranium enrichment site that was first exposed by the NCRI. The newly leaked documents once again confirm the Iranian resistance’s warnings over the past four decades that the ruling theocracy is deceiving the international community to secretly advance its nuclear weapons programme at the cost of the Iranian people’s worsening economic situation.

UN’s condolences over tyrant’s death

It is now clear that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a terrifying threat to peace in the Middle East and worldwide. The Security Council must abandon its derisory attempts to appease the mullahs and take decisive action to prevent a nuclear war. After the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash on 19 May, the Security Council in New York shamefully offered their condolences and held a one-minute silence.

Raisi was known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ for his role as an executioner of tens of thousands of political prisoners. Nevertheless, the UN headquarters in Geneva disgracefully flew their flag at half-mast in his honour and, in an outrageous affront to his victims, the UN General Assembly itself held a memorial service on May 30.

The EU has spent decades bending over backwards to appease the mullahs while they have sponsored conflict across the Middle East and terrorism worldwide, almost certainly being behind the attempted assassination of a former European Parliament vice-president, Alejo Vidal Quadras, last November in Madrid. The time for diplomacy and dialogue with this gangster regime is surely over.

Struan Stevenson, a former member of the European Parliament, is the coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change and chair of the In Search of Justice committee on the protection of political freedoms in Iran. His latest book is entitled Dictatorship and Revolution. Iran – A Contemporary History.